Need some advice, mainly from heroic raiders/leaders

Hey all well i recently created my own guild (playing prot pally) due to people wanting me to, my plan originally was to apply for some heroic guilds that take raiding seriously while also have fun, aka, 3 raids (maybe 4) a week for a few hours, nothing like 6 days a week for 7 hours (thats too much i.m.o). I had mixed thoughts about creating my own guild, as it always goes: raids go well, people then start slacking as we're progressing heroic, guild falls apart.

Well we did our first raid week, and i honestly wasn't impressed, the guild was made up off 6 of us being from the previous guild with 12/12N, a hunter with 4/12N (good mate who didnt get to raid previously) a shammy who's done 11/12N, a warrior tank who's done 8/12N and a druid who has 12/12.

The raids were fun, but when we got to a fight that required a little bit of movement, wipes occured, the shammys healing dropped by like 50% due to movement (durumu for example), that cuased us around 6-8 wipes, and then we eventually got to iron qon, with tons of wipes, we finally killed it with low dps. Even with me 1 tanking i feel like my dps is VERY LOW and a part of that is because the fights dragging on for so damn long.

I only really want heroic raiding, normals are nice for social raiding but if i wanted that i would have the guild filled with just good mates of mine, who aren't exactly great dps/heals etc just to have a laugh, but everyone knew/knows this guild is for the purpose of heroic progress.

When i 2 tanked in previous guilds, i did a little less dps than i did on iron qon and before anyone says it, i know we had a dps dead for the kill, but that's the tank in his dps offspec, and we never would have 10 alive at the end...

My opinion/issue

The shammy healer is slacking in my opinion, he has the legendary meta gem, and is by far the lowest healer, and on any LITTLE movement fight his hps suffers. On durumu with 3 healers, if the pally or druid died, i would die. On the first part of iron qon, i would out heal him too, i know pallys are great for healing, but i didnt have battle healer glyphed, i did have it glyphed previous attempts but i tried making the healers step it up for future fights by removing it (told them i dont expect to out heal em), he did out heal me at the end of the fight, but P1 is quite healing intense and having a pally tank in 3rd who isn't using battle insight is shocking.

Warrior: as a warrior tank he could a crap ton of damage on durumu for example, i was the main tank,s witching on 4x stacks, but the healers couldnt keep him up, due to play style i guess (i noticed lack of shield barrier pre hard stare etc for example, not sure if warriors are meant to though.. dont play em) anyway we switched to 1 tank to fix it, ( was planning on 1 tanking hc anyway) but his dps spec does like 60k dps, while having quite a bit of gear, even 2 set ToT.

I understand people may have a one off in a fight or such, happens to us all but it was quite frustrating last week to wipe on things a few of us constantly 1 or nearly 1 shot before, i feel that i will need to replace the shammy healer as heroic will require a lot of movement anyway, and the warrior, as his dps in tank and dps spec, is very low and hsi damage taken is going to be an issue if healers struggled with him on Normals.

What do you think? Should i replace people, if so who? shammy? Warrior? someone else? My origonal setup for this raid team was:

Prot pala - me
Prot war

Disc priest
Holy pala
MW monk

dps dosent matter that much, i like the dps we have atm (setup anyway)

Should i replace the shammy for a disc? (REALLY struggling to find them atm would heroics be a hassel with a different class?)
Warrior tanks who do heroic raiding, please look at the logs, is the warrior tank good? using his cds and such? Or should i replace him.

Long story short:
I want hc progress, and was asked to make a guild instead of leaving realm
The healing is lacking and i feel like the off tank isn't that great, i over agro / he takes a crap ton more damage, awareness is also a issue with both war/shammy (they joined together so replacing 1 will mean replacing both basically)
is heroic doable with no DISC, i wanted spirit shell but if i really can't get a disc, what healing class would be suited for the healers we have now? (IF REPLACING shammy)

I am not currently a herioc raider, but have run a guild before and been an officer in a couple of guilds to boot.. I honestly would give it 2 more lockouts to develop that synergy. From my experience when building a new raid group it takes some time to build that trust in all 10 people. Give it a little more time and see if once everyone is comfortable with each other that numbers improve. If they don't then you move forward with your plan to replace. Can you honestly analyze 1 lockout period and say some of my team is garbage??

Ideally no one has ever hit the level cap of the last expansion, looked at their dungeon blues, and thought "I win."

Warriors do take more damage but less high spikes. They are great in terms of smoothing incoming damage. Overaggroing after a taunt or overaggroing right after the pull? If you overaggro after he had to taunt: That´s your fault. You are revenge stacked, he is not.

Before replacing anybody, bring up all of your concerns to all of your raid members. You need to let people know that if they don't step up they will be replaced. You also need to bring it up with your entire raid because you need to be able to avoid guild drama. If you replace someone out of the blue, and if other raiders were friends with him/her, it can cause unnecessary drama.

Shaman are great healers to have because they bring a lot of utility. Even a good Shaman healer will probably have less hps than a Disc priest, but the utility they bring is definitely worth it. I would bring up with your Shammy how to improve their play. For heavy movement fights, Durumu in particular, it's a good idea to save Healing Stream for the movement phases, else spamming Riptide.

If you replace the Shammy, Disc isn't a bad option but since you're 3 healing with another Pally you already have absorbs covered well. Spirit Shell is an awesome cooldown but I'd probably opt for direct healing/raid healing. A Mistweaver Monk would be a good choice.

I don't have much experience with Warrior tanking, but taking heavy damage probably means he/she is either not using Shield Block/Shield Barrier effectively or is stacking stamina instead of taking avoidance/mitigation.

Before making any decisions, though, I again think it's a good idea to talk it over with everyone. If people just don't improve their game, that's when you replace them (as politely as possible).

I am going to agree with Aiko, guild meeting time, explain your expectations and say after each lockout logs will be analyzed and people who are grossly underperforming (not just by numbers) by dying to stupid or standing in fire w/o their fire boots will be benched. Another thing is find a right hand man who will be willing to be your "researcher" as in having a general knowledge of many different classes and can point people in the right direction to blogs and otehr advice web sited to help push them from normal mode to herioc raids. I know a lot of players who settle into a comfy routine as a solid 12/12N person and want nothing to do with heriocs.. is it possible you have a couple of those who are venturing into HC raiding for the first time and are cracking under the pressure to perform?

Ideally no one has ever hit the level cap of the last expansion, looked at their dungeon blues, and thought "I win."

About the overagro bit; i main tank so at the pull there's no issue, when he taunts i take Righteous fury off and chill a bit, but even after a few seconds, maybe 5-10+ i'll still be awfully close to over agroing.

Warrior dmg taken, he was first stamina gemmed, but we fix'd that bit.

Also something i never pointed out, i am planning on 2 healing a ton of fights with:
Holy pally + disc, and have the 3rd healer dps. The only fights i wanna 3 heal for safety is Jinrokh, mageara, Dark Animus maybe and lei shen, the rest should be easily doable with 2. maybe 3 for iron qon.

Also something i never pointed out, i am planning on 2 healing a ton of fights with:
Holy pally + disc, and have the 3rd healer dps

That makes keeping your Shaman (or replacing w/another Shaman) an even more desirable move. Elemental is very strong this tier. Player skill is, of course, more important but it can save you the hassle of recruiting if you can have 'em pick up their game.

That makes keeping your Shaman (or replacing w/another Shaman) an even more desirable move. Elemental is very strong this tier. Player skill is, of course, more important but it can save you the hassle of recruiting if you can have 'em pick up their game.

Yeah i was planning on booting shammy/war tbh but i'm kinda being unfair, thanks to this thread i've realized that anyway... I'm just really eager to get into heroics but eh xD, i'm gonna talk to the team before raid later and tell who i believe needs to pick it up and offer them help to do so.

You need to make your issues clear and make sure that your issues are understood. Give him a chance to explain his point of view. The main thing you want to see is that he understands where your coming from as much as you understand where he is coming from. Everyone should always be aiming at improving. Furthermore, ask where he is theorycrafting, ask what videos he watches before a fight, ask what he specifically does to enhance himself as a player.

The attitude he displays when dealing with him in this manner will show alot about the quality of raider you have.

Yeah i was planning on booting shammy/war tbh but i'm kinda being unfair, thanks to this thread i've realized that anyway... I'm just really eager to get into heroics but eh xD, i'm gonna talk to the team before raid later and tell who i believe needs to pick it up and offer them help to do so.

You my friend will make an excellent GM.. give the warning (you have logs to prove your point) offer the help, and it seems you have stated your goals to your guild up front now judge performance and reach your goals..

Ideally no one has ever hit the level cap of the last expansion, looked at their dungeon blues, and thought "I win."

About the overagro bit; i main tank so at the pull there's no issue, when he taunts i take Righteous fury off and chill a bit, but even after a few seconds, maybe 5-10+ i'll still be awfully close to over agroing.

As others have said, it takes a while for the synergy to happen. You don't just form 10 people who aren't accomplished raiders and walk into heroics.
Did you pick these people because they have potential or did you really think they were the finished product?
If the potential is there, it may take a couple of weeks to nurture them rather than just kick / replace. but yes, the shammy and warr are underperforming.

Anyway you have some work to do yourself with comments like "don't know what warriors do, dont play em" As a raid leader its your job to know what tools your team has at their disposal.
Also, the part I quoted, hand of salv yourself. You have tools you aren't using, which brings me to my next point.
Who the fuck uses execution sentence as prot? You even used it on megaera.

Anyway, shaman are suboptimal this tier. The majority of fights are crap for shaman (especially durumu), and even on fights where they're not crap there's no real reason to bring them.

When one healer has very low HPS, you drop him, because there's simply nothing to heal. 10man normal, all fights can be 2man healed (except maybe Megaera, but even that is doable 2-man). There's no reason to bring a third. If you really want to test your shaman's healing, have him 2man heal with someone else.

As others have pointed out correctly too, you don't just make raid, walk in there, and make it happen. You'll need time. If you want to raid lead a heroic guild succesfully, you will need a lot more knowledge and experience, and it seems you're lacking both at the moment. It's ok if you don't have it and do it anyway but don't come down hard on fellow guildies just cause their numbers aren't crunching.

As others have said, it takes a while for the synergy to happen. You don't just form 10 people who aren't accomplished raiders and walk into heroics.
Did you pick these people because they have potential or did you really think they were the finished product?
If the potential is there, it may take a couple of weeks to nurture them rather than just kick / replace. but yes, the shammy and warr are underperforming.

Anyway you have some work to do yourself with comments like "don't know what warriors do, dont play em" As a raid leader its your job to know what tools your team has at their disposal.
Also, the part I quoted, hand of salv yourself. You have tools you aren't using, which brings me to my next point.
Who the fuck uses execution sentence as prot? You even used it on megaera.

I do use salv some times but considering it dosent remove the threat it's almost no help to me, i take righteous fury off and that should be enough, about execution sentence, its the highest dps choice, so perhaps the pallys who want to contribute with the damage? Lights hammer is good for healing yes, but 3 healing normal with a cooldown rotation trivializes that, for heroic i may use Lights hammer depending on how the healers + raid cd rotation works.

Also i don't play some classes which means i might get some things wrong, but i do have their raid cooldowns ready to call out, i'm using hermes to track them too.

Ah the Paladin Warrior Threat competition. I play a protection paladin in a 25 man hardcore raiding guild. This problem is even worse in a 25 man and on heroic fights. Many tanks read 500x increased threat, time to get rid of omen. I am going to start by telling you why you are having threat issues and then a few tips to stop this from happening.

Taunt still only gives you 10% more than the current tanks threat. Which is not much at all in the age of giant vengeance pools. You have probably noticed you only have threat issues on fights were you get hit very hard (ex. Jin'rokh, Twin Consorts...). Vengeance does not max out the second you taunt the boss. Take Herioc Jin'rokh 25 man for example. I will be sitting at 200k ap from vengeance when my co-tank taunts. He only starts at about 50k ap. I can easily overcome his threat since his first few attacks are more focused on survival/rage than damage. Most of the resource generating attacks for tanks do not hit very hard. Take Crusader strike for paladins versus Avenger's Shield. Avenger's shield can hit for 700k+ on Jin'rokh while Crusader strike still hits for 100k. Thus Avenger's shield will pull off of your co-tank. Basically what you need to do is wait a few seconds and then watch your threat meter as you dance. Especially if one of your abilities crits (When Avenger's shield crits for 2.5million like it does on Jin'rohk I pull off my co-tank.) Threat is still important for tanks. Also this is exemplified with debuffs that increase your damage taken since they also increase your vengeance pool.

Steps to help with Threat Dance.
1) Install Omen and watch it when he taunts off.
2)Avoid using Hard Hitting abilities for the first 5 seconds or until Threat gap is large enough. (ex. Avenger's Shield)
3)Don't use Execution Sentence. When we were struggling to meet H Jin'rokh enrage week 2(sad I know) I went full out dps mode. I specced Execution Sentence and noticed that it always pulled off my co-tank. The last hit is always the largest and seems to always land when I am not tanking on Jin'rohk. So I would recommend avoiding this ability since it likes to pull threat and doesn't help your survivability.
4)Open communication between both tanks is a must. Be vocal about if you are about to pull threat or think you are. Many times were I have to retaunt a boss to keep it on me.

Side-notes:
Protection Paladins are the best tanks this tier, due to mechanics. Also comparing paladin to warrior on Durumu is not advisable. Hardstare reduces outside healing. Meaning that Seal of Insight and WoG are still doing their full healing. During Progression on normal mode, I did 90% of the healing to myself when I tanked Durumu(I also tanked during beams when healers were moving all over the place.). Protection Warriors do not have a heal like paladins, so they will take more damage on this fight.

This is just a pet-peeve but your warrior was doing nothing wrong stacking all stamina. If he is having problems surviving that is the best stat for him. It may not be optimal at a certain point, but overtime he will learn when he needs to stop stacking stamina and switch to the other stats. Also if he is not that good at his mitigation yet mastery is going to do him almost nothing. Also tell your shaman and warrior to install GTFO might help with their awareness(only reason I know a stupid totem has gone down on H Horridon.)

Hey man im the raid leader / GM of my guild. We are 6/13 H (Only raid 2 days a week) In regards to the shaman, they simply blow in 10m. We forced our Resto Sham whos been healing since Vanilla and is an exceptional healer to go elemental. If you want an example of how amazing our Resto Shaman was he solo healed Heroic Rag back in firelands during our sales, meaning we 9 manned Heroic Rag (as the buyer would jump off the ledge @ the pull) and solo healed the raid. However, in Throne R shams in 10m simply blow there aren't enough stacked fights. The only 2 fights I would say R Shams are decent on are Heroic Maegera and Heroic Iron Qon I guess. If you want to progress scrap the shaman or make him go Ele. Ele owns on Heroic Horridon, Heroic Durumuu, Heroic Iron Qon p4 cleave and so on. Anyways we had our R Sham go ele and we picked up a mistweaver. Hpal Disc and MW is probably the best 10m heal comp. this tier by far and I highly recommend it if you can get it which according to your post I think you can?

Keep in mind you JUST started this guild it will take a couple weeks for everyone to mesh etc. Give it another week or two before doing some drastic, im sure it will work out. As far as the Prot Warrior goes, Prot Paladins are simply god-mode this tier. You cannot compare your damage intake to a warrior or to any other class. Warriors take a little more damage but are far less spiky in comparison to lets say a blood DK or bear. Blood DKs are pretty garbage for HMs this tier in throne for 10m and Bears are nothing special. Keep the prot warrior or get a brewmaster those are the only two decent tank classes apart from Prot Pally which just blows every other tank class out of the water.

Before replacing anybody, bring up all of your concerns to all of your raid members. You need to let people know that if they don't step up they will be replaced. You also need to bring it up with your entire raid because you need to be able to avoid guild drama. If you replace someone out of the blue, and if other raiders were friends with him/her, it can cause unnecessary drama.

This. 100%.

It sounds like it should be reasonably clear to everyone what your raiding goals are as a guild, but it wouldn't hurt to make sure everyone understands the purpose is to progress through heroics.

What does that mean?
- Everyone is responsible for understanding the fights ahead of time. That means understanding their individual role as well as a general understanding of what everyone else will be doing. If you aren't responsible for dispels on horridon, for example, that's fine, but you should still be aware that they need to happen and be ready to help out if possible. There's nothing wrong with having the spend a few attempts to see it first hand. Video guides only get you so far towards getting the feel of the fight.

- Everyone is responsible for making sure their character is as raid ready as possible every night. Gems, enchants, flasks, food, potions, etc. Can be a guild provided thing or individual, but if the guild doesn't provide these things, everyone should understand they are still responsible for their own stuff.

- Everyone should understand that their raid spot is conditional on their performance.

As a raid leader specifically, some things to keep in mind. You have 2 main responsibilities as a raid leader.

- Keep the raid moving smoothly. If you hit a snag on a fight, you have to be able to adjust and find a way to solve the problem. No, that doesn't mean un-glyphing battle insight and telling your healers they have to work harder. If someone makes a mistake, understand that mistakes happen. Say something, make sure they know what happened, but keep it civil and brief. The least helpful thing you can do is have the mistake repeated over vent by half of the raid 5 different times. Once is enough.

- Make sure you have a decent sized roster. Even if its only 2 or 3 subs, you should be able to swap people out if they are underperforming and ensure you always have a full raid. The biggest progression killer (I can back this from personal experience) is having to pug a slot every other week. Raids are infinitely more successful when you have a consistent group because players learn each others' tendencies and play better together. Not to mention the fact that skipping the strategy talk before every farm boss is a massive time saver and will give you more time to progress on new bosses.

- Your job is NOT to find every small mistake or possible improvement in your logs after the raid. You can do this, but if you're intending to do heroic progression, everyone should be doing this for themselves. Make sure everyone has access to your logs and knows where they are. If you have a player with noticeably poor performance, you should talk to them and see if you can help, but you should also make it clear that it is their responsibility to perform better or they may be replaced.

I do use salv some times but considering it dosent remove the threat it's almost no help to me, i take righteous fury off and that should be enough, about execution sentence, its the highest dps choice, so perhaps the pallys who want to contribute with the damage? Lights hammer is good for healing yes, but 3 healing normal with a cooldown rotation trivializes that, for heroic i may use Lights hammer depending on how the healers + raid cd rotation works.

Also i don't play some classes which means i might get some things wrong, but i do have their raid cooldowns ready to call out, i'm using hermes to track them too.

Just to chime in here: ES is really pretty shit for prot. HPris is far more useful, more overall damage, FAR more overall healing, and scales with spell haste (unlike ES or LH). I've taken multiple top1-10 ranks, and never, ever used ES. LH has it's places, mainly on HC Meg and HC Council, MAYBE HC IQ (but I still prefer HPris there.

Salv will fix 99% of the issues if your co-tank is awake. It is VERY occasionally an issue if you have stellar RNG, huge veng, and trinkets up going into the swap, and your offtank has shite luck with dmg, but 99% of the time, salv is all you need.

Also, RShams are just shit in 10m, N or HC. It's sad But, Ele is beast (hi2u HC Durumu!). If you can run Disc, MW and/or HPal you'll be far better doing so and having RSham go ele. The raid CDs are great, but when HTT is like 30-40% of your healing, it's indicative of a serious class issue. Sadly, since RSHam shines in 25 with clumps of melee to heal/pad, they can't really tweak 10s commensurately.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

Your healer logs don't actually look that bad. When evaluating a resto shaman, don't look at raw HPS for anything you are 3 healing. They will be total crap. Between Paladin mastery, druid hots, mistweaver throughput, and disc bubbles, shamans are there to look pretty, toss totems and come up with a clutch heal. Between all the spread mechanics of this tier and the sheer amount of damage mitigation discs and paladins bring, your shaman can be absolutely perfect and still be 30k behind. Our mastery is worthless unless its in a clutch heal situation and all we have is our cooldowns. Its those cooldowns that are why you take a shaman, even in 2 heal fights. And if the shaman is 2 healing with either the paladin or druid you should see much closer numbers.

I am the resto shaman and healing officer for a 10man guild (1/13H, working on Ji'Kun). I heal with a disc priest and a holy pally (my prefered comp). On 3 heal fights I am there for my CD's as their bubbles mean anything I throw hits like a drunk hooker. In 3 heal fights its about playing smarter, not harder. Keeping the HP buff on the tanks and as many people as possible, maximizing healing stream use (check out Lifeingroup5.com for the strings to track this), maximizing cooldowns and using them at the right time and being ready with a clutch AS+GHW on a tank who is standing in the bad without a CD. We 2 heal Duru (me and the pally) and week after week we are within a couple hundred to a 1000 of each other on the HPS meter. Healing anything 2-healed with the priest and I can make a respectable showing, but its mostly about being the mana battery with great cooldowns.

Its sad that this expansion is making is harder and harder to resto shaman with respectable numbers. We are here for utility (cooldowns and buffs) rather than throughput. But it is that utility that makes shamans desirable. Talk to your raid, let your healers learn to work together (healing is more of a team sport than anything else) and you should start seeing a settling out as people get comfortable. Expecting world first performances the first week is a little unrealistic. Also before you start throwing out healers cause of HPS, take a deeper dive into the logs. HPS is never the entire story but simply the tip of a very large iceberg.

Speaking directly of your shamana: I would carefully discuss all the chain heal use. That seems to be his go-to spell rather than something with a bit more HPM. Unless you are using mostly Stack and Zerg strats, chain heal rarely hits enough targets to be worth the mana even if it did heal for more. His HST uptime is ok but could improve. Once he learns the damage patterns that your raid will take, I would expect to see more Ascendance use. For heroic Jin'rokh, a glyphed RT (the only time it seems to be worth it) can make spreading the HP buff over the raid easier. Basically your shaman isn't terrible, but before screaming "YOUR NUMBERS SUCK!" take the time to figure out if they suck cause he is just bad or because your healers are still learning to work together.

I've not properly raided on resto shaman but if you look at the logs there are a few problems that could help them improve. The shaman shouldn't just get a free pass because 'shaman are poor just now'.
The shaman has talented into Unleashed Fury but only cast Unleashed Life 15 times on the Iron Qon kill, a 10min 51sec fight. The spell only has a 15 sec cooldown so should see a lot more usage and is a waste of that last talent point tier. Earth shield uptime was 80%, should this not be higher too?
1 ascendance used, they could've had 3 easily. I dunno how many times healing tide was used but doesn't look like enough total healing for 3 uses either.
It's maybe unfair to analyse the shaman just because they are bottom though. Look at the druid, 80% lifebloom uptime and only 21 swiftmend casts too so it's not just the shaman that could be doing better. Looks like tranquility was only used once too, didn't use barkskin, only used Ironbark twice. It's just easier to look good on meters as a druid since all the hots are fire and forget but I think you'd need to look into more detail than just HPS.